Sonata Dusk, former Siren and current zero at Canterlot High, was having an issue that many people have experienced, most of whom, like Sonata, are not in the possession of many friends.
Where to sit for lunch.
The girl stood anxiously near the end of the lunch line, feeling indescribably uncomfortable without her usual two companions. After their plan to dominate the minds of high school students and accumulate enough power to take over the world completely fell through in an embarrassing display in front of said high school students, two things had happened to her:
For starters, her magic was completely gone. A flame inside of her that had burned for thousands of years had been extinguished, and she was never going to get it back. She wasn’t immortal, couldn’t use mind domination, and couldn’t sing, all three of which were vital parts of her very existence.
Secondly, and far more importantly for a high school student, her social life was dead. It wasn’t much to begin with, seeing as she’s only ever been friends with her partners Aria Blaze and Adagio Dazzle, using the term ‘friends’ as loosely as possible, but even then it was some form of companionship. Now all she had was herself, surrounded by people who hadn’t forgotten about the time when she totally tried to brainwash them.
A weekend had passed since that time, but the memories of that night would live on forever in the minds of the students, most likely along with their negative dispositions towards their former aggressors.
The first day back at school, Sonata tried to speak to Adagio and Aria, but they completely shut her down. Aria blamed Adagio and Sonata for their failure, and Adagio blamed Aria and Sonata. Sonata just wanted her friends back, but all their heated argument during that Monday lunch accomplished was to push them further apart, with the two more aggressive Dazzlings outright refusing to associate themselves with each other any further. When Sonata pleaded with them to just sit down and talk it out, they turned on her, giving her the same treatment they had given each other.
Sonata swept her gaze across the lunchroom, searching desperately for somewhere to sit. Aria and Adagio sat alone at tables on either side of the lunch room. That was out of the question.
She shifted her eyes to where the Rainbooms sat, feeling a twinge of jealousy at their laughter and apparent camaraderie.
She needed somewhere to sit, anywhere. Anything to stop this sensation of extreme vulnerability that ran through her as she awkwardly stood with tray in hand. She would have even accepted an empty table, had there been one, but no such luck.
‘Rockers…Aria…Adagio….Geeks…Rainbooms…Jocks…’
Her ruby eyes finally locked onto a nearly empty table that had just barely caught her attention. A student in an orange jacket and a green beanie was sitting alone at the table, his lunch tray left unattended in front of him and his attention directed to his cell phone.
Sonata, low on options, decided that sitting next to some guy she didn’t know was marginally better than eating her lunch in the girl’s bathroom. She crossed the room to the table, flashing glances to the students who looked up to glare at her. She laughed nervously and gave one of them a little wave, to which the student rolled their eyes and returned their attention to their lunch.
Trying to look and sound as cheerful as possible so as to make a good impression, despite her despondent situation, she walked up to the lone boy and looked down at him. He, eventually feeling the sensation that someone was watching him, looked up from his phone to be met with Sonata’s wide smile.
“Hi!” she nearly shouted, waving her hand ecstatically. The boy looked confused at this unexpected encounter, but gave a small flick of his hand to return her wave.
“Uh…hello?” he responded, slightly uneasy at her appearance.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” Sonata asked sweetly, pointing down at the chair. Surely her thousands of years of experience as an alluring siren would help her gain the favor of a simple teenager.
“...Do I know you?”
Or maybe not.
“Um…would you like to?”
Sonata inwardly cringed at her stilted reply, but let her smile do the talking. The boy raised an eyebrow before returning his attention to his phone.
“Yeah, sit, whatever.”
“Thanks!” Sonata said excitedly, brushing off his neutral tone. She sat next to him and set her tray down on the table before turning towards him. “I’m Sonata. What’s your name?”
“…Norman.” he responded noncommittally after a pause, obviously distracted by his phone and somewhat disillusioned to the idea of having a conversation with Sonata. Sonata glanced at his phone and saw that he was playing some sort of game.
“Nice to meet you, Norman! I’m Sonata.”
Norman stopped tapping away at the phone and turned his head to Sonata with a curious look on his face.
“You already said that.”
“I already said it was nice to meet you? But I haven’t met you before.”
Norman blinked.
“No, you said your name was Sonata,” he clarified.
“Of course I did. How else was I supposed to introduce myself?”
Norman rolled his eyes, not willing to put up with this line of conversation. He tried to return his attention to his game, but could feel Sonata’s curious eyes on him. Eventually, Sonata shrugged and looked down to her tray, realizing that he wasn’t going to answer her.
‘Oh well. He’s not exactly a fun guy to talk to, but at least I have my-‘
There was no taco on her tray. It was Taco Tuesday, a holy day of Sonata’s week in which she was presented with potentially endless amounts of her favorite food, and she had completely forgotten to pick one up at the lunch line.
Sonata would have screamed at the top of her lungs, but realizing that she was in public, she simply adopted a look of extreme horror and screamed inwardly, her entire world falling apart from a lack of tortilla shelled goodness.
She flung her gaze about wildly, searching for some escape from this torment. A bag of cheese puffs, a liter of cherry soda, anything unhealthy and fattening, anything!
Finally, her eyes landed on her savior: a taco. A perfect, soft shelled, steaming hot, downright seductive taco…which was sitting directly on Norman’s lunch tray. Feeling as if she was going to die without her taco on Taco Tuesday, she had to ask the one question that was nearly always answered disappointingly.
“Are you gonna eat that?” she asked with an anxious smile that hid her feral desire to jump on top of the table on all fours and slam her face into Norman’s taco. The taco owner in question finally put his phone into his pocket, resigning to Sonata’s constant interruptions.
“No, I took it from the lunch line because I wanted someone other than myself to eat it,” he said, his voice dripping with toneless sarcasm. Unfortunately for him, none of those drops seemed to make it to Sonata’s ears before she let out a breath of relief and grabbed Norman’s taco.
“That’s so considerate of you!” Before the victim of a horrendous injustice, that being having one’s taco stolen, could voice any objection, Sonata took a large bite of the taco, shivering slightly at the orgasmic taste of her taco.
“Thanks, Norway!” Sonata said gratefully through a mouthful of her taco. She eagerly dug into her taco, the juices of her taco spilling over her lips, her delicious taco too savory for things such as manners or decency. It was just Sonata and her taco. Her yummy, yummy taco.
Norman looked on, dumbfounded that a girl just stole his taco, sloppily dug into it, and then promptly forgot his name.
”It’s Norman,” he said, annoyed, picking at the remainders of his lunch. Sonata flushed lightly in embarrassment, the blush extremely apparent on her taco filled cheeks.
“…I knew that,” she finally said, the lower half of her face masked by the taco she held before it if it were a shield. “I was just testing you.”
Norman looked up at Sonata and gave her an unimpressed look.
“On my name?”
“…Yes.”
A corner of Norman’s mouth lifted just slightly; not quite a smile, just an acknowledgement of the humor of the situation. His hand drifted around his lunch tray, finally deciding on a baby carrot from his salad. He took a bite out of it before turning back to Sonata.
“Sorry if this is a little blunt, but why’d you sit here?” Norman asked, idly chewing on his carrot. Sonata finally swallowed her enormous initial bite of taco before thinking on the question.
“Why not?”
“I’m a complete stranger to you,” Norman pointed out flatly.
“Oh, come on Norman! We’re already on a first name basis.”
“Sonata, I met you, like…” Norman fished out his phone, checked it, and then put it back, “…three minutes ago.”
“Yeah, but in those three minutes, we exchanged names and you gave me a taco, and that second thing gives you some major brownie points with me,” Sonata replied happily before taking another bite out of her taco.
“I’m sure there’s someone here you’ve known for more than three minutes. Why don’t you…I mean, why didn't you sit with them?” Norman corrected himself quickly, not wanting to be too hard on Sonata. After all, she seemed innocent enough to him…well…unless she made a habit out of stealing tacos.
Sonata chewed thoughtfully for a moment before quietly swallowing. As she wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her wrist, she turned her head slightly to look back at where Aria sat, alone. The girl looked furious, throwing a menacing glare at anybody who even gave her a passing glance.
Turning her head in the other direction, Sonata saw Adagio. The large haired leader was doing much of the same as Aria, but every so often she would paw idly at her neck, only to seize up and cringe horribly as she felt nothing but her own skin. Sonata frowned sadly at the sight, resisting the powerful urge to feel for her amulet.
Looking back at Norman, who was still looking at her for an answer, Sonata pointed Aria and Adagio out, trying to be as subtle as possible.
“Well…um…I’m friends with those two…’ Sonata began slowly, even the taco in her hand not enough to completely compensate for the sudden drop in her mood at the sight of her broken friend. “…but I don’t think they want to talk to me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because they told me that they don’t want to talk to me anymore,” Sonata replied, setting her half eaten taco down on her tray, her appetite leaving her. Norman just sat there, uncomfortable with her blunt answer.
“…Okay then,” he finally settled on. He looked away from her for a moment, his thoughts lingering on her last statement. Eventually, he turned to her. “Is there any particular reason you sat over here?”
“Because I couldn’t sit with my friends,” Sonata said, giving him a confused and slightly hurt look. “I just said that.”
“No, I mean, it’s kind of a big cafeteria. Why sit here?” Norman extrapolated.
“I dunno,” Sonata said, shrugging. “You looked nice.” She thought back on what she said directly after it left her mouth, wondering if it held some sort of connotation that he wasn’t nearly as nice in person.
Which...was completely true, yeah, but it’s still not a nice thing to say to someone you just met.
Norman tried not to let the compliment go to his head, slowly realizing it probably had something to do with his personality rather than his actual physical attractiveness. Once he fully realized that, he let out a chuckle.
“What gave that off?” He asked good naturedly, leaning back in his chair.
Sonata didn’t really have an answer for that. She’d never really gotten a good look at him, so she took this opportunity to do so. He was tall, a good head taller than Sonata. He had a very unique skin tone: light peach. His eyes were a light brown in color, once again a bit of an oddity. Sonata quickly glanced over his clothes: dark green pants, large belt, button down, orange jacket...then she looked up a bit...
“...Probably the hat,” she finally settled on. Norman glanced up, as if noticing for the first time that he was wearing a large green beanie over his long brown hair. Evidently, Sonata thought that beanies made people look approachable. Or just unintimidating.
“Oh,” Norman said, not exactly sure of how to respond. After an odd moment of eye contact, Norman turned back to his lunch. He picked up his plastic cup and tipped it back, taking a swing of water.
“You’re weird.”
Norman looked out of the corner of his eye at Sonata, surprised at her sudden outburst. She had a very quizzical look on her face: her eyebrows were furrowed, and her mouth was shaped into some sort of half frown. It was something between confusion and irritation. Norman set his cup down and swallowed his water before turning his head to Sonata.
"Excuse you?” he finally said. Sonata began speaking as soon as the words left Norman’s mouth.
“Why haven’t you said anything yet?” she said, her voice getting louder with every word, causing some people from other tables to look. Some who hadn’t noticed Sonata initially glared at her, while others smirked at Norman. Norman, unlike Sonata, noticed this.
“We’ve been talking, Sonata,” Norman said jokingly, his voice a bit hushed in an attempt to bring Sonata back down to Earth.
“But, like, you haven’t mentioned anything about…” Sonta began before the feeling of eyes on her prompted her to turn her head around. She caught several people looking before they quickly looked away. Her irritation melted into insecurity, and she lowered her voice as she finished, “...that…stuff.”
“You mean when you and those two tried to take over everybody’s mind with your singing?” Norman deadpanned.
“Yes, that!” Sonata exclaimed, standing up and slamming her hands on the table. Her heated expression very quickly turned insecure once again as everybody in the lunch room went quiet. She slowly sat down, leaned over, and buried her red hot face in her arms on the table. Eventually, conversations around her started up again, but her face remained hidden.
Norman looked on, a touch of sympathy on his face, but didn’t really know what to do. He was going to keep her in the dark, but she sort of blew it out of the water in a spectacular way. Besides, the sight of Sonata nearly dying of embarrassment made him feel a bit bad for giving her the run around, no matter what his intentions were. So he went ahead and said it.
“I feel like you’ve gotten enough flak for that.”
Sonata paused for a moment, completely freezing. After a frigid minute, she slowly lifted her head and stared at Norman, her mouth slightly open. She held her stare for a moment too long for Norman, who began to fidget a bit under her watchful eyes.
“So....you were just playing dumb?” Sonata finally said, surprised. She couldn’t for the life of her think of a reason why he would do that. It’s not as if anyone else at the school ‘conveniently forgot’ anything she had done in the past. Norman just shrugged.
"Yeah. I figured that it would be pretty hard to approach people when you’ve got all this baggage. Better to have a clean slate starting out.” He smirked, and then reached out to grasp his cup once more. “But this whole back and forth kinda makes all of that null.” He raised the cup to his lips and casually took another sip.
“You’re…you’re not angry about all of that, or anything?” Sonata asked, her voice thick with disbelief. And taco. There was still some stuck behind her back teeth. Norman set his now empty cup down onto his plastic tray and brushed his hair out of his face.
“It happened and then it was over,” he said with finality. “I don’t really see the point in talking about it.”
“...Huh.” That was all Sonata could say. Well, it wasn’t all she could say; her vocabulary wasn’t very large, but it consisted of far more words than just ‘huh’, which isn’t even a word.
She seemed shocked that someone looked past something so extreme and...well...evil...that she had done, let alone with such nonchalance. Not having much to say to Norman, especially since he just told her to not talk about her attempt at magical mind domination, she turned back down at the taco, only for a gear to finally turn in her dusty head.
”This taco was for you, wasn’t it?”
Norman looked up, a blank expression on his face. He held it for a moment before letting out a sudden, uncontrollable laugh.
“D-Did you just pick up on that?” Norman said through his laughter, his hand held to his mouth in some attempt to muffle himself.
“Sorry,” Sonata apologized sheepishly. She knew she couldn’t pick up sarcasm; hell, it had taken Adagio seven tries before Sonata finally understood her explanation of what sarcasm was. Whenever she misread a sarcastic comment only to become aware that it was indeed sarcastic later, she had always felt a bit embarrassed, and this time was no different.
“Don’t worry about it,” Norman said after he had his laughter under control, waving a hand at Sonata. Despite his relative hunger, he didn’t mind Sonata’s ditzy actions all too much. Until she picked up the taco and continued her quest for total taco consumption. “…You’re still eating it.”
“You told me not to worry about it,” Sonata said through a big wad of her taco, not even bothering to swallow before answering in a confused tone of voice. Norman made a face as he saw the mess inside her mouth, his eyes darting away.
“So I did,” he said, mentally dousing the sight of Sonata’s taco filled mouth with mind bleach. Delicious delicious mind bleach.
“…Do you want me to go get you another one?” Sonata said, thankfully after she had swallowed the mouthful of her taco.
“It’s fine,” Norman said, standing up. He slung his backpack straps over his shoulders and picked up his tray. “I’m gonna head out anyways.”
“What?” Sonata said, startled. It felt like they had only been talking for five minutes, an actual conversation between Sonata and someone who wasn’t a siren, one that didn’t involve talking about plans to steal magic or to fed on anger and distrust, and it was already ending?
“The next period starts in five minutes,” Norman pointed out.
“Yeah, in five minutes,” Sonata shot back, wanting to drag this talk out as long as possible.
“It’s on the other end of the building,” Norman said. He turned around and began to walk out, Sonata looking desperately at his retreating form as she sat there in defeat.
‘Well, it was nice while it lasted…’
“Sonata, you can come with, if you want.”
‘WHAT!?’
Sonata saw as Norman stopped and turned around, looking at her invitingly. He wore a quirky half smile, which slowly faded into a confused frown.
“Sonata, it’s Pre-Calculus,” he said as if that was supposed to mean something to Sonata. Which it did. She immediately perked up, and got to her feet, positively shaking in her leg warmers out of excitement.
“Hey, my next period is Pre-Calc!” Sonata exclaimed. Norman rolled his eyes to heaven, as if asking, ‘can somebody up there help this girl?’. No response. He could have a least used the sound of a cricket chirping for comedic effect, but no dice. Shame.
“Yeah. You've been in my class for the past week. You never noticed?” Norman asked, raising an eyebrow at the ditz.
“I…I guess I never paid much attention,” Sonata admitted before her eyes widened. “Wait a minute, you said you didn’t know me!” Norman simply smiled at her and shook his head.
“Clean slate, remember?” Norman reminded her. He turned back around and made his way towards the lunch room doors. “You coming or what?” He called over his shoulder.
Sonata began to move forwards, but quickly halted herself. She looked back at Aria and Adagio, taking in their sadness and spite. She looked back at Norman's retreating form, Sonata’s time for a decision getting shorter and shorter.
She finally ran to catch up with Norman, completely forgetting her tray, and the unfinished taco that lay there.
What a waste.
